The most insidious thing is that they know the political leanings of the communities they join and exploit them to push propaganda.

If it’s a piracy community, the easy inroad to make with them is anti-capitalist sentiment. This is effective in no small part because it contains a modicum of truth: big companies do suck, capitalism sucks, etc.

If it’s a social justice or world news community, hammer the Palestinian genocide. Accuse all your critics of being Isreali propaganda. Again, they start with the popular (or rather, populist) stance.

They sow discontent wherever they go, ramping up their messages to blood-boiling hatred. “Capitalist pigs” gets traded out for “Western pigs,” “liberal scum” turns into “democratic scum.” “Isreal” quickly becomes “the Jews, everywhere, without distinction for political belief or religious belief,” which then becomes “all minorities, everyone disrupting the ‘social order,’ threatening the ‘natural’ way of things.” Along the way, they prep you to disregard all your critics as enemies, paid propagandists, imperialists, spies and saboteurs.

Once they get you all riled up, they offer the solution to aaaall your problems: fascist regimes, authoritarian governments, crushing dissent and criticism. They steer you toward Russia and China, because those countries have it all figured out. Nevermind that they are empires themselves.